The Devil’s Muse

Thriller: Wait Until Dark

Movie review
Terence Young’s Wait Until Dark

On the Bubonic Illiterate‘s recommendation, I watched Hush, a slasher flick with a disabled victim who outwits her nemesis using her disability. From the moment it started, I found it reminiscent of the 1967 film Wait Until Dark, which follows the very same premise.

Unlike Wait Until Dark, however, Hush didn’t provide with a sympathetic victim, which is, I guess, part of the tradition of modern slasher films. In Wait Until Dark, the narrative builds a relationship of exploitation between the victim and her nemesis that is caught up in her marital relationship, making her feeling of isolation and vulnerability as a blind woman greater as the movie goes on. Even though she is in the middle of the city in her home, she is still pursued as a victim in a web of lies she had no idea she lived in. So scary. And her final act of using her disability to deceive her nemesis makes you want to scream and cheer at the same time.